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Fraternities and sororities are social organizations for men and women, respectively, and are quite popular in US colleges. Membership for these is usually procured when one is an undergraduate student, but remains in place for life! So, it is natural for the members to be quite attached to the name and activities of the organization they belong to.

Although fraternities and sororities are usually very secretive about their rituals, their purpose is more or less the same: to develop the characters of their members and prepare them for personal and organizational responsibility.

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A large fraternity or sorority usually extends throughout the country with some locations scattered overseas as well. This connects people from far off locations to each other, forming a strong bond of brotherhood (or sisterhood). Each location is referred to, in the Greek life, as a chapter and the more chapters, the more spread out the organization will be, which is why we have taken the number of chapters in each fraternity and sorority as our ranking criterion.

First, we extracted the 10 biggest fraternities and the 10 largest sororities from Greek Rank. We used this website as our starting point because it is the only source that provides aggregate and concise information for both regular and cultural organizations. The two lists found were then combined to form one consolidated ranking, where the numbers of chapters were taken from the respective websites of the societies to make our information much more reliable. It is important to note here that some of these websites are not updated regularly so the number might not be very exact. However, the fraternities / sororities mentioned in the list are undoubtedly the biggest because their numbers are much larger when compared to other societies. Where the number of chapters could not be found on the respective website of the organization, we resorted to Greek Rank to provide us with the figure.

Furthermore, we have considered all types of cultural and honor societies to make the list more comprehensive, because almost all organizations, which have historically been associated with a specific race, have expanded their memberships and now admit people of all races. Even though it is still considered quite strange for an African American to be in a white sorority or a Caucasian to be a member of a black sorority, instances of both have been on a growing trend for a while now.

Without further ado, let’s take a look at the 11 biggest fraternities and sororities in the US, but don’t forget also to check our article on the 11 biggest foundations in the world!